Kerry re­it­er­ates Pak must elim­i­nate ter­ror

US sec­re­tary of state John Kerry said on Wed­nes­day Pak­istan has to do more to elim­i­nate sanc­tu­ar­ies of ter­ror­ism on its soil and push harder against indige­nous groups en­gaged in ter­ror­ist ac­tiv­i­ties. Islamabad is not go­ing af­ter ter­ror­ist out­fits such as the Laskhar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mo­hammed sin­cerely, he said dur­ing an in­ter­ac­tion with stu­dents at IIT-Delhi on the third day of his visit to In­dia.

Also, he made a point that big democ­ra­cies like In­dia should re­spect rights of all ci­ti­zens, “ir­re­spec­tive of creed and al­low them to protest in peace with­out fear that they will be jailed for speak­ing”. US sec­re­tary of state John Kerry ad­dress­ing stu­dents at IIT in Delhi.

His re­marks came in the back­drop of the US speak­ing out in sup­port of free­dom of ex­pres­sion af­ter Amnesty In­ter­na­tional was charged with sedi­tion in Ben­galuru re­cently.

The city has al­ready recorded al­most its en­tire an­nual av­er­age rain­fall, with a month still to go for the south-west monsoon to com­plete its four-month cy­cle. The av­er­age rain­fall in the city is 2,258mm ev­ery year. On Wed­nes­day, the San­tacruz weather sta­tion, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Mum­bai, recorded 2,183mm rain till 5.30pm. It means the city has re­ceived 97% of its an­nual av­er­age rain­fall and is just 75mm short of com­plet­ing the an­nual av­er­age.

Weather­men said as the south­west monsoon be­gins its with­drawal pro­cess, the pos­si­bil­ity of heavy rain­fall is likely dur­ing the sec­ond half of Septem­ber. “The weather bureau had pre­dicted a 6% sur­plus rain­fall for the en­tire coun­try be­fore the set­ting in of the south-west monsoon. With al­most a month still to go, Mum­bai and some parts of the Konkan coast will def­i­nitely be a part of that 6% ex­cess for the sea­son,” said Biswa­jit Mukhopadhyay, ad­di­tional di­rec­tor gen­eral, In­dia Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Depart­ment (IMD).

Mukhopadhyay said the up­per air cir­cu­la­tion over Ara­bian Sea, re­spon­si­ble for rain last week in Mum­bai, has faded away. “We ex­pect con­di­tions to be favourable for some rain from the sec­ond week of Septem­ber,” he said.

Mean­while, the sub­urbs recorded 0.2 mm rain be­tween 8.30am and 5.30pm on Wed­nes­day, while neg­li­gi­ble rain was recorded in south Mum­bai. Be­tween 8.30am Tues­day and 8.30am Wed­nes­day, San­tacruz and Co­laba both recorded 1.8mm rain.